Even from in front of the Athens County Dog Shelter outside of Chauncey, Ohio, the barking of the dogs inside is clearly audible. A car pulls up with a new shelter inhabitant in the back seat, just one of the many dogs finding their way to the shelter. This is where Marishka Wile, 55, president of the Friends of the Shelter Dogs volunteer group, has spent the last 10 years aiding dogs in finding a new home and organizing their veterinary care.
Even with Wile's decade-long experience volunteering for animal welfare, 2022 continues to be a real challenge. “There's been an explosion of dogs this year,” Wile said about the shelter, which currently experiences an influx of pets being surrendered or rescued. With the increased number of dog returns during the COVID-19 pandemic still impacting the shelter today, the continuous inflation only tenses the situation. Many owners surrender dogs for reasons like housing changes, expensive pet fees or moving to no-pet apartments, she reports. This is where Wile steps in, organizing fundraisers and asking for donations both food and financial, all so that Friends of the Shelter dogs can make sure the dogs are vetted, fed and taken care of.
As president of the volunteer group, Wile is in charge of typing up pleas and write-ups for adoptable dogs, arranging vet appointments, communicating with partner rescues, ordering shelter and foster supplies, requesting donations and much more. The small Appalachian community in Athens County does not have the capacity to foster all dogs in need and lacks the funds to vet them, which makes the shelter’s and volunteers’ work essential. As president, Wile needs to keep an overview over pressing issues and adapt the volunteer group’s strategies. In response to the lack of fosters, a big Facebook campaign was launched this year, aimed at adding fosters to their network to get dogs out of the shelter.
Regularly, Wile takes dogs to the vet for heartworm treatments, traumatic injuries or life-threatening diseases, issues that are often too expensive for the average adopter. Friends of the Shelter Dogs takes care of nearly all the vetting of the shelter dogs: “This does not prevent dogs from entering the shelter, but it does make them adoptable so they can leave the shelter,”
Wile said.
Now a well-respected member of the volunteer group board, Wile first encountered Friends of the Shelter Dogs at the “Ohio PawPaw Festival” a decade ago, where she met the American bulldog Petey. “He was big, and he was gorgeous. And he was very, very damaged,” Wile said about the dog that started her involvement in animal welfare. “I wanted to be a part of the organization that had saved his life,” Wile said. She took to the page and captured her journey with rescue dog Petey in her book “Petey: A Story of Mutual Rescue.” Wile feels deep compassion for animals, their innocence and their need for support. “I feel like I adopted a
version of myself,” she said about Petey's anxious condition after the rescue. After Wile's father passed away with her aged 5 and she witnessed her mother take care of four children on her own, taking on the challenge of supporting dogs in need just felt natural to her.
Retired from work, she continues caring for animals and commits all her time to volunteering and to her four dogs at home, all from shelters. To extend the reach of her good influence, half of the profits of her book published under the pen name Ishy Creo go to different animal welfare organizations she is not active with. Having always had a passion for writing, Wile now utilizes her skills in write-ups of adoptable dogs that are published in the newspaper and run on the local radio station in Nelsonville.
As a rescue coordinator, Wile takes part in preventing euthanasia of an abundance of dogs with her work. “There are so many dogs out there like Petey, and I need to do my part in helping them,” Wile said. Even though she described her work as mentally and emotionally stressful, she sees the true hurdle elsewhere: “The hardest thing about volunteering is thinking about all the ones that you don't get to, all the ones that are out there that need help that you don't know about.”
Molded by her past, Wile lives in the present, not being able to look far into the future with her shelter dogs. “It’s really hard to make huge long-term goals when every day is an emergency,” she said. “We see the results of the very worst of humanity.” To do her job as a volunteer and president of the group, this needs to be a secondary concern. “The hardest thing is just the innocence of the dogs. They are vulnerable in ways that people are not,” Wile said. Still, she commits her time to Friends of the Shelter Dogs and drives an hour from the farm she lives on with her husband, which her family
has owned since 1976, to the shelter. Putting all this effort in is worth it to Wile. In the end, the greatest reward is watching the transformation of the dogs from being in bad mental and physical shape into becoming adoptable, according to her.
Leaving her teaching job after 20 years was the biggest loss of her identity. Now, thanks to Petey and Friends of the Shelter Dogs, she happily reports having found a new one. “I feel like I've made a better difference in the 10 years that I've been doing this than I ever did teaching,” Wile said.
Saving animal lives is a full-time commitment and dogs are not the only animals under her care. Wile has been keeping bees for around 15 years now, wanting to do her part in supporting the species. In her past she also had a place on the board of The Ohio State Beekeepers Association and volunteered for the Athens County Humane Society.
As part of a tight-knit group of volunteers, Wile stresses how everyone’s contribution is needed for the success of Friends of the Shelter Dogs, but her personal impact does not go unnoticed. Jacque Rock, a colleague of Wile who has been part of the volunteer group for around six years, appreciates Wile's hard work and her commitment to getting dogs to a better place. “She's transported them herself before just to get them there when we haven't had room on a transport,” Rock said about Wile's efforts to bring dogs to out-of-state partner rescues. Underneath this admirable working spirit is a heart that beats for animals and an uplifting and genuine personality, according to Rock. "She just does a lot of good stuff for the universe," Rock said about her.
Wile’s efforts are paying off. “This year we were able to reduce the shelter population by 25% by sending over 150 shelter dogs to our partners,” she said about Friends of the Shelter Dogs. 19 more dogs were rehomed from community members in extenuating circumstances. Utilizing a grant from Two Mauds Inc. and local business sponsorships for the volunteer group’s “7th Annual Cruise In for the Shelter Dogs” event allowed the organization to spay and neuter 50 dogs. That directly helps to keep the shelter population down in the long term, Wile said.
To realize her mission of saving the dogs, Wile wants to raise awareness about her organization Friends of the Shelter Dogs, all the dogs in need and the volunteering. “I think a lot of people don't know exactly what all goes into the shelter life and the life of a volunteer,” she said, referring to the physical and emotional toll it takes. But for now, Wile does not plan on stopping that volunteer life. Even though the Friends of the Shelter Dogs members already make sure every dog who reaches the shelter now has a home, there can never be too many new volunteers. “Homeless dogs are everyone's issue,” Wile said.
Comments